MILTON- A woman accused of faking terminal cancer for financial gain has been charged with fraud over $5,000 for allegedly scamming a fellow worker who had taken pity on her while they were both working at a Burlington real estate office.
Ashley Kirilow, 23, who has been in custody since Aug. 6, first learned about the new charge when she appeared for her bail hearing in Milton court Wednesday.
She was already facing three counts of fraud under $5,000 for allegedly bilking three other individuals who had tried to help over a period of several months when they believed she was dying from cancer.
In the latest charge, it’s alleged she hoodwinked realtor Donna Michalowski out of an undisclosed amount of money between Feb.1, 2009, and Mar. 30, 2009, while they were both working at a Sutton Group realty office in Burlington.
Tracey Haslip, also a Sutton Group realtor, said the whole office staff had opened their hearts to Kirilow while she worked there as a secretary in 2009.
“It makes me sick to my stomach,” she stated upon hearing Kirilow had allegedly scammed her friend and fellow worker.
“I truly believed she had cancer,” added the realtor whose own mother died of cancer eight years ago.
Haslip described Michalowski as a compassionate person who would never pass up a chance to help another human being in need. Like everybody else, she was touched by Kirilow’s story and became a kind of surrogate mother to her.
“She took her under her wing. They went shopping and did things together. She had a daughter about the same age, who is getting married this weekend,” she said.
With a shaved head, plucked eyebrows and emaciated body, Kirilow had no trouble convincing her colleagues she didn’t have long to live. She further tucked at their heart strings by claiming her parents were dead and she had nobody left in the world. Her colleagues showered her with love and affection and organized benefits on her behalf, including a comedy night at Club 54 in Burlington.
By this time, members of the general public had also picked up her story and tried to make the last months of her life as pleasant and comfortable as possible. A Toronto charity paid for her trip to Disney World in Florida to fulfill one of her last wishes and friends raised about $9,000 in cash for her during a benefit at the Queen’s Head tavern in downtown Burlington.
By Christmas Eve last year, however, Haslip said her colleagues at the Sutton Group office, including Michalowski, were starting to express doubts about Kirilow’s story. They had seen Kirilow at the Court 49 shop at the Mapleview Mall where she was now working as a clerk. Her hair was growing back and she looked a lot healthier than she had only a few months earlier.
If she ever sees her again, Haslip said, she’ll sit Kirilow down and describe in excruciating detail the agony her own mother went through during the last months of her life to show Kirilow the difference between fake cancer and the real thing.
”It takes a special kind of sickness to say you’re dying when you’re not,” she added.
Kirilow had a few acquaintances in the Milton courtroom Wednesday when she appeared for her bail hearing. But nobody had yet shown up willing to put up bail money or to act as a surety to secure her release from custody.
During the 15-minute session, Justice of the Peace Ken Deckert read out all four charges against her and asked if she understood them. She replied that she did as she stood in the prisoner’s box wearing a prison-issued forest green sweat suit. She now has a full head of brown hair which was tied in short ponytail. She seemed calm and relaxed as she answered the routine questions.
At request of duty counsel Ron Brooks, her bail hearing was adjourned for the third time and she was remanded back to a woman’s detention centre in Brampton. She will make her next court appearance by video link from the jail on Aug.19.
Investigative journalist Paul Legall spent 35 years working on daily newspapers in Alberta and Ontario, 32 of them with the Hamilton Spectator. Part of a three-reporter team that covered the trial of the Paul Bernardo school girl murders, Legall’s popular column, Crime File resurrected infamous historical cases such as the Torso Murder Trial in Hamilton. Ont.
Paul can be reached at: legallpaul@yahoo.ca
